Bill Murray Auditions For The Lead In NBC’s ‘Peter Pan Live!”

With NBC setting Peter Pan as follow-up to its hugely successful live musical The Sound Of Music, speculation has been rampant who would play the boy that never grows up. In announcing the title and Peter Pan Live‘s premiere date, Dec. 4, NBC boss Bob Greenblatt wouldn’t elaborate on who will follow The Sound Of Music star Carrie Underwood as headliner of Peter Pan, other than to dismiss rumored names like Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift. Cue airborne Bill Murray singing his heart out in a all-out performance of I’m Flying on tonight’s Late Show With David Letterman. His message to NBC casting execs: “I’m the guy.”

25 Comments

There’s a difference between doing a bit on Late Show and doing a threequel that potentially tarnish the legacy of a cherished franchise.

joke • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

What a completely ridiculous thing to say.

1) Do you have a quote where he or anyone involved in the production said he believed himself to be “above” it? If not, I’d suggest you learn what quotation marks mean.

2) Doing a comedy bit on late night for/with an old friend is a pure experience. It’s an in the moment comedic bit done for the audience, his friend (Dave) and himself. Which brings me too…

3) Doing a 100 million dollar film you don’t feel you can give your all to IS NOT a pure experience. It’s a decision driven by money just to make others money.

I’m one of the biggest Ghostbuster fans around. I don’t want to see a Part III without Murray and I’d never give him a hard time for not doing it. He doesn’t want to. He was burned by Sony before. He’s evolved. It’s over.

Not everything must be sequelized and beaten to death just because the option to do so exists. Bill’s interests (and lackthereof in GBIII) should be admired. Get over your nostalgia/desire to see the same thing over and over again and appreciate Bill’s body of work and self respect.

Yes he would. Smee, maybe. But Hook? You are coming up against comparisons to Cyril Ritchard and you don’t want to do that.

me • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

Yet another Late Night example of the audience rhythmically clapping in a seeming stupor to something that kills time over and above entertains.

robert b garant • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

You must be a blast at parties.

(and by that, I mean — if you’re going to just shit on things, harmless things that other people enjoy, dourly, witlessly, and anonymously, on comment boards — you add nothing to this universe, or this comment board.)

me • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

My observation, Mr. Garant, was that to my ears, had the audience at the show enjoyed it more, they would have elicited more than a trained seal-like clapping response as this bit droned on and on, off-key. It’s a holdover from Letterman’s “this isn’t really funny, which makes it funny” revolution a la when his groundbreaking comedy style first hit in the ’80s. But in 2014, in my opinion, his show’s intentionally anti-comedy bits often wreak of just not being funny enough to receive mass laughter, vs. Pavlovian clapping. When the airwaves are as precious as they are, and shows stay on the air as long as this one, I believe someone is entitled to opine when the emperor is lacking clothes. If that doesn’t measure up to your level of wit, Mr. Garant, my apologies.

me • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

Sorry, I meant to say the comedy bits often “reek” of… not “wreak” of. : (

robert b garant • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

if you believe your smartypants B.S. — why anonymous?

Pvt. Duke • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

Have you ever been to a Letterman taping? They light up that “APPLAUSE!” sign so often that your hands are numb from clapping by the time the first guest comes out. That said, you don’t want to be the only asshole with his hands on his lap while they’re doing the pan shot of the audience.

THEY MAKE YOU LAUGH. Still glad I went, though.

James • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

Yeah, you’re all so right…I’m just glad he wasn’t “above” doing the Garfield films!!!

Nerml • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

FYI, Bill Murray recently admitted in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” interview that he signed on to do that film solely because he had mistakenly confused Garfield director Joel Cohen with Coen brother Joel Coen.

Read his post on Reddit about that. He mistakenly signed on to the movie without finishing the script thinking it was a Coen brothers movie and then spent months trying to fix a broken production. Not that your post means anything anyway.

Mark K. Garfield • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

A smart playwright should write a great character for him in a great play however the way that playwrights used to for specific actors. Atlantic Theater/Steppenwolf/Chicago “actor’s event” types. Ensemble types like Jon Robin Baitz and Tony Kushner too. An Arthur Miller would have known what to do with him. These “S.N.L.” people are so conducive to eight performances a week because of that live experience. And his work in “Hyde Park on Hudson” was masterly. Just keeps getting better and better and more interesting. Is Hickey in “Iceman Cometh” not a tragic Bill Murray hoodwinking and enthralling an entire bar for three acts? The one that everybody’s waiting for because he’s so notoriously entertaining? Original drama’s ambitions (and dramatists) are too modest these days. (And Steve Martin coming back to the theater is very good news indeed. Is “An Object of Beauty” still happening with Amy Adams? Subtle urban twists and turns, great characters, juxtaposing great works of art with the picayune manipulative – as he does with original flair in the book – certainly a potential canvas about lots of stuff. Fixing a gaze upon the art world the way you do a painting. Or the keeps-you-guessing Adams who is Mona Lisa Everywoman perfect. Martin himself narrating would also be very interesting which is not in the book in terms of the probable age of the first person account but a wizened older guy looking back kind of thing if that were possible given the time frame. A character study studying a character studying characters that mirrors the elegant conventions of all kinds of high brow cons. It’s genteel Mamet really.)

bento box • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

Hey I read that book. If it doesn’t work out with Adams, although she’s a little young now, Lacey could be a great transitional role for Shailene Woodley too. You can see her unintentionally tying everybody into knots “by accident.” Amanda Seyfried too.

Bill Murray is not just a comic genius, but also a great writer. He co-wrote “Lost in Translation”.

Howard "Lasagna" Sands • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

Sofia Coppola…a “where you have gone?” Jonathan Demme…Mary Steenburgen, Melanie Griffith, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jodie Foster, Anne Hathaway…actresses have kicked it up a notch after working with him…he ups their game; seems to have great intuition about focussing on who they are and bringing about their most attractive best efforts.

The Right Coast • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

Does anyone really believe that Murray signed onto a movie bc the thought the director was someone else. Great story. Total bullshit.

James • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

The director of Garfield was Peter Hewitt…yeah…I’m sure he really thought that might have been a Coen brother. The dude wanted a payday! Did he think he was making a Coen brother movie when he made Garfield 2 as well? How about Operation Dumbo Drop?

The fact is, he’ll do any hack work that’s thrown his way, but when it comes to coming back one last time and honoring the movie that made him a superstar…Ghostbusters…he’d rather spit in the face of his fans, not to mention his old buddies Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, Dan Ackyroyd, and Ernie Hudson, who he couldn’t care less about.

pete • on Jan 31, 2014 4:05 pm

Anyone who doesn’t think that every bit of Bill’s dialogue wasn’t his own words is living in a world of denial…Sophia got the credit but we all know where the words came from. Bill Murray is in a class by himself.